Whisper
by CertifiedGeek
Summary: There are many things the Doctor has run from, and some of them are just whispers in the dark. Oneshot. Complete.


Whisper

The first time he heard the words they were a whisper in the wind. It was a storm on a distant world where the sky turned purple and the rain fell, white as ash. The words washed through his mind and faded to nothing in a veil of tears.

On the barren, desert plains of Fenris they brushed against his ear a second time. An echo of a long forgotten past, they curled around the edges of his memory and swept through his thoughts. He reached out to capture them, and they darted away, evading his search.

The frozen seas of Woman Wept brought his companion to his side. Her smaller hand clasped his broad fingers as they stared up into the hanging waves and the blue bathed sky. Visible only to him the words etched themselves into the stratosphere, vanishing in a blink, their vague impression lingering in the red of his eyelids as he turned his face to the sun.

Burning with regeneration energy they branded themselves to his soul. A secret, unforgiving promise, tying him to the world from which he ran. In wakeful hours the words slipped beyond his reach, but in his dreams they became a furnace, white hot and tortuous. They woke him, their screams mingled in his own, filling the crevices of his brain with black and brooding thoughts.

After Midnight, they broke him. The words carved themselves into his flesh, branding chest and back until there was not an inch of his torso that did not burn. His cries drew his companion from her sleep. She bathed the wounds with tenderness until his eyes brimmed with tears and her arms encompassed his bleeding form.

In the dim light of his bedroom, he told her of the war. Not the fall of Arcadia, or the destruction of his own people, but of a tiny world in Kasterborous. A planet created by the power of the Word. A place called Nym.

Nym orbited not a sun but a wizened moon, a pinprick of light in a darkening sky. Home to mages, the ever-changing globe held its form, and its place in the stars, through crafts understood only but the magicians themselves.

Running from battle a scared man with foppish hair and pompous velvet fell through the sphere; his blue box summoned by the Magicians of the Word. Afraid to fight, he salvaged all he could from a burning universe, piously believing each single life saved would balance the evils of the Time War.

Wounded, near death, they gathered him from the stars, the lost child of Gallifrey. Mages tended his wounds and bound him to a promise with their ministrations. Nym, and the power of the Word, must survive the end of time.

Sensing Time Lord presence, Dalek ships descended on the tiny world. Fire rained from the sky, a thunderstorm of infinite destruction. He begged the mages leave, but they would not. They begged him to fight, but he would not. And so they died as he looked on. It was not his war. He would not stand.

With no-one left to speak the words of creation, Nym unravelled. The last words fell through purple skies in tears of white rain whispering a promise in the ears of a crying man who feared the call to arms.

 _You will remember._

With the remembrance of Nym came the words, uttered in a trance and whispered on a breathless tongue. They wove patterns in the air, meshed into a translucent sphere that clung to his lips through strands of purple light. Hypnotised, the globe led him to the threshold where TARDIS doors open into a dark, dead space where no stars shone.

With oxygen stolen from his lungs the words burst into life. Inflating, stretching the bond, they fed, sucking thought from his mind and life from his hearts. Around his chest two arms locked, a fragile human grip holding the Time Lord inside his ship. Her words, shouted into darkness, became matter. Curses of anger and protection transformed into clouds of red and amber; human compassion breaking over the growing sphere. Her words expanded, exploded and showered the chant that still echoed on the Doctor's blue lips, propelling the orb into motion.

Spinning, churning, the gaseous globe absorbed the new words and thrived on their power. Exploding into physical form it swallowed the TARDIS whole. Gorging itself on the oxygen inside it suffocated the Time Lord and his human. The vessel creaked and moaned. She let out a breath of her own; a golden light that wove two words into the fabric of the forming world. A promise and a warning.

Chastened, Nym's echo expelled the TARDIS from its grasp, and retreated into the oily blackness of a starless sky. In fear it cast a single thread of light, bringing breath to empty lungs and life to stilled hearts.

The last time he heard the words they were a whisper of regret carried on the fading light of a distant moon. They were the words of a world running from its creator. A world afraid of the wolf at the door.

* * *

A/N:

Your constructive crit on this new style would be very much appreciated. This piece has been hard work, I'm not convinced it was worth the effort.


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